Not Exactly a Big Finish

There is a difference between a cost-cutter and a wrecker, between the penurious and the perverse. Those perplexed about the category to which Gov. George Deukmejian belongs might find their guide in one of the most bizarre of the record 436 vetoes he made this year.

As he rushed to meet last weekend’s deadline for action on bills passed by the Legislature, one of the many proposals Deukmejian rejected was AB 2813. That measure would have allocated $13 million to the state fund that helps counties defray the costs of providing the investigators and expert witnesses required to assure indigents accused of capital crimes a constitutionally adequate defense of their lives.

Minimal though such expenses may be, most of California’s fiscally hard-pressed counties are unable to meet them. That is why the 1977 law that restored capital punishment created a program to reimburse counties for these costs. The author of that law was a Republican state senator from Long Beach named George Deukmejian.

Saturday night, Deukmejian, ignoring the state attorney general’s urgent advice, eliminated the fund.

As a consequence, the criminal justice system now has three options: Prosecutors can refrain from filing new capital cases purely because their counties cannot afford to finance them; judges can exercise the contempt powers granted them under a California Supreme Court ruling and compel county officials to find money they don’t have, or the system can proceed as Deukmejian has left it, and churn out capital convictions that inevitably will be overturned on appeal. Under California’s Constitution, the only way out of this morass is for the next governor to request that the Legislature pass an emergency spending measure to restore the fund. Assemblyman Richard Floyd (D-Carson), who introduced AB 2813, already has said he will carry such a bill.

Such is the chaos that lame-duck Gov. Deukmejian has bequeathed to the system state Sen. Deukmejian helped to create. Ironists may savor such a situation; believers in effective public policy and a rational system of criminal justice will be left to shake their heads.

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